“After Midnight” (1986) – Fastway * Written by Eddie Clarke, Dave King, Shane Carroll, Alan Connor, and Paul Reid * 45: “After Midnight” / “Don’t Stop the Fight” * LP: Trick or Treat (soundtrack) * Produced by Eddie Clarke and Will Reid Dick
This hair metal ear candy supports the notion that a listener’s taste for the genre connects to positive childhood associations with Halloween. Former Motörhead guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke grabs from a bowlful of AC/DC chords for this leadoff single from the soundtrack for Trick or Treat, a film that offers no crucial cultural literacy rewards for those who haven’t seen it. It does contain a few ingredients worth mentioning, though: a cameo by Ozzy Osbourne as an anti-metal evangelist; another cameo by Gene Simmons as a DJ; and a backwards-record plot gimmick. In an era when parents feared metal’s corrosive powers, the movie depicted a resurrected metal musician with murder on its undead brain. Director Charles Martin Smith had played Toad on American Graffiti, from which he lifted that movie’s DJ-as-enabler idea.